What you take away with you is the faces. Little girls in bunny ears. Fathers beaming over their families — and their barbecue pits. A buck-toothed bunny piñata swinging in a tree. Boys in buzz cuts with Easter baskets. Festive confetti decorates everyone's hair from cascarón battles. And, yes, that is a guy in a brown bunny suit on a blue chopper.

“I naturally gravitate to people,” says Romo, whose family sometimes gathered in Brackenridge Park when he was a child. “And people are very hard to photograph. They see you with a camera and they get into their poses. So I try to catch them before they can do that, or set them at ease. Kids are fun because they're riding their bikes or playing, and you capture them enjoying life and the park. They really bring back my memories of Brackenridge Park as a child.”

Romo calls the park — named for banker and businessman George W. Brackenridge, who donated 199 acres to the city in 1899 — a “gem” within the urban landscape.

“Being a historian by training, what I wanted to do with this project was capture what is best in San Antonio,” he says. “You know, when you think of the best of San Antonio, the Alamo and the river jump to mind, but the park is this sort of hidden gem that is definitely one of the best features of the city. And on Easter weekend, it's like a big family reunion. I ran into families that were neighbors of mine when I was a kid growing up here. And I lost count of how many people said, ‘Oh you have to try this sausage.'”

“He just has a way of putting people at ease,” says Arturo Almeida, curator of the UTSA Art Collection, and of the Easter exhibition. “He stops and smells the roses, or the barbecue, in this case. And he has a secret weapon in his wife, Harriett, who is a sociologist and can say, ‘Why don't you take this photograph?' Of course, he just has a very good eye.”

Over three days of Easter weekend 2011, Romo made five visits to Brackenridge and shot 800-plus images. It was Almeida's job to winnow them down to a manageable 20 large color prints for exhibition. (More than 500 other images are screened in a loop on a color monitor in the Witte gallery.)

“What I was looking for was the story, and the history, behind this San Antonio family tradition that has been going on for generations,” Romo said. “And I think the photos do tell a story, the story of how a family comes together.”

One photo shows a man in a T-shirt with “South Side” printed across his chest holding on to a sign that reads in spring colors: Cerna Family, Brackenridge Park, 56 years. A younger man at a smoking pit holds up two fingers of one hand and four of the other, meaning he's been coming to the park at Easter for 24 years. And, from Romo's photos, it seems nothing makes a kid happier than an Easter basket and a piñata.

Many families claim the same space year after year, some for decades, notes Timothy N. Tuggey, president of the board of directors of the Brackenridge Park Conservancy.

“It is a time when young and old spend a few precious days together in one of San Antonio's most historic places — a place, in fact, where we know that families have been camping for the past 8,000 years,” he said. “Dr. Romo's wonderful photographs provide a window into an extraordinary place and time, a literal snapshot of our community showing memories in the making.”

sbennett@express-news.net

“Family Traditions: Easter in Brackenridge Park” remains on view through May 27 at the Witte Museum, 3801 Broadway. Call 210-357-1896 or visit www.wittemuseum.org for more information.